[Spartacus]

Hi,

After many ears in purely visual astronomy I decided to take on the challenge of astrophotography. To keep costs down I always try to make equipment. So here is an all in one solution that I made recently.
It sits on a bracket under my EQ6 mount and only needs 1X 12 volt input underneath. Keeps all the cabling neat.
It has
- 3 channel thermostatically controlled (arduino based) dew controller based on Robert Brown's design (bluetooth)
- Arduino motor focuser (Rob Brown design) with temp compensation
- a powered USB 3 hub (3 external ports and 3 internal)
- Ethernet and wifi connection
- Odroid single board computer running Ubuntu
- I upload images to a local 2 TB hard drive through one of the USB ports
- The other two ports are for the mount and cameras.
I polar align using a ASI120 USB3 camera fitted into a 3D printed cradle that fits into the polar scope window of the mount using SharpCap polar tool. Once aligned the camera is used to guide with an OAG.
I use KStars with EKOS as a planetarium and mount control and to schedule and sequence the evening's imaging and although this was a steep learning curve now I have everything working it makes things very simple. Guiding is with eKOS and I plate solve with EKOS using the off line astrometry which is pretty quick and accurate.
The case is from Altronics and the whole thing is cooled by a thermostatically controlled fan.
I seem to be in a posting mood recently so thought that I would share. Hope you like it.

Mike